Fire Pits Made From Scrap Iron Parts

Fire Pits Made From Scrap Iron Parts AG WORLD 34-5-21 Jan Anderson rearranges her fire pits like many people rearrange furniture. She starts with a large tire rim and artistically stacks implement parts from her scrap iron pile. "I'm intrigued by iron parts and how they fit together," Anderson says. "I didn't grow up on a farm, so I don't know what all the parts are. To me they're just functional art. I like the iron because it rusts and changes color." Thankfully, she's never short parts. Many come from her dairy farming son-in-law. Others are junked parts from the agriculture research center where her husband, Vern, works in Carrington, N. Dak. "The guys like to come and see what I did with those parts," Anderson laughs. The fire pit aficionado does all the work herself, from laying out a fireproof base of galvanized metal from an old swather to lining up mower section guards along the edge. No welding is involved. "Friction holds it together," Anderson says. "It's just a matter of trial and error. I reassemble each one many times before it works." The one at her Carrington home has been modified often and makes a great outdoors stove for cooking meals in foil or slow cooking a beef brisket in a Dutch oven. Visitors enjoy identifying the parts: broken digger shanks, disc blades, roller chain and a blower from a combine's chaff spreader, for example. "People that work with these implements might be horrified to see how the parts are being used," Anderson laughs. "But it's giving them a new life. I like making something from nothing." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Jan Anderson, 6687 6th St. N.E., Carrington, N. Dak. 58421 (janderson@com).

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